replication of painting with dslr

Hey everyone,

My mom likes to paint watercolors and is interested to replicate her paintings with a dslr. She bought an epson 3800 printer for precisely this purpose. She is having some difficulty though replicating the colours precisely, and getting the white balance right. No combination of camera settings, or lightroom adjustments, seem to result in an exact replica of the original painting.

Does anyone have any insight on whether this is possible, or if so, any suggestions/ recommendations? I realize this may not be easy and special expertise / a scanner, may be required.

Thanks!

Have you calibrated your monitors etc and creates a color profile for your monitor as well as using proper color profile for the printer?

(BTW, I know nothing about color profiles. )

Have your monitor and printer been properly calibrated?

If not, it may look right on the monitor but not be accurate in the actual file.

Yeah... we're using "Spyder"...

got that one covered.

The first issue is controlling the light so you don't have different kinds of light (daylight, incandescent, fluorescent, flash, etc.) affecting the image. It would be best to use all daylight or a mix of daylight and electronic flash in order to have a broad spectrum of color in the light.

Secondly - you need to somehow make sure that either the camera gets the colors right in the first place or that you have a reference shot taken in the same light so that you can get it right in post-processing.

Third - I would suggest shooting in RAW mode (or RAW plus JPG if you wish) so that you can easily make the color corrections that may be necessary. Tweaking a .JPG image is extremely difficult compared to tweaking a RAW image file.

In addition, you need to control the direction and quality (softness) of the light so that you don't get the light source reflecting back at the camera. This involves selection of the lighting equipment but, and more importantly, positioning of the lighting.

On top of all this, as Sandpiper mentioned above, it's critical to calibrate your monitor and your printer. This will require color-sensing hardware and software to do properly.

Hi SkipD, thanks so much! We did actually calibrate the monitor / printer using Spyder. Right now we do not have much control of lighting; just using the daylight right now as it comes through the window in our basement. We bought lighting equipment but we had a difficult time getting even exposure and getting the white balance right.

Can you suggest a specific type of lights to be used, and a specific means of positioning them? Or would it be better to stick with daylight and improve orientation? Any resources (information wise) you can suggest towards this end would be helpful.
Thanks!

bowlesbe wrote in post #4604794
Hi SkipD, thanks so much! We did actually calibrate the monitor / printer using Spyder. Right now we do not have much control of lighting; just using the daylight right now as it comes through the window in our basement. We bought lighting equipment but we had a difficult time getting even exposure and getting the white balance right.


Can you suggest a specific type of lights to be used, and a specific means of positioning them? Or would it be better to stick with daylight and improve orientation? Any resources (information wise) you can suggest towards this end would be helpful.
Thanks!

If you are going to be using small light sources (ie. lightbulb) you will want to keep it a ways back from your subject. The further away the light source is, the more evenly the light will fall on your subject.

You may be able to find some inexpensive lighting kits designed for ebay/tabletop work. You can also try shining your lights away from your subject and reflecting them back with white fome-core or something similar. Basically, you want to make your light source as large as possible, so you get even lighting on the subject, without 'hot' spots or glare.

It may not be possible on a home printer. Monitors/fabric dyes/paint pigments & printer inks all have a different response to the color spectrum & while you can probably get close, you might never be able to get an exact match without going to a professional printer using Pantone inks.